Remember the lost 18 years since 9/11

Once again, families will gather at ground level, where almost 3,000 people died on the bright September morning. Once again, it will pour out sorrow. Once again, there will be the sound of bells trolling in grief and names being recited.

Eighteen years have passed since aircraft aimed at the World Trade Center and brought them down.

The memorial at ground zero – now an annual memorial drawing following a familiar, gloomy script – will begin with bags and drummers marching in cadence. An honor guard will carry the flag.

At 8:46, the time when the first plane crashed into the north tower, it will be a moment of silence, the first of six marking the strikes at the Merchant Center and the Pentagon and the plane crash in Shanksville, Pa., And the collapse of the twin towers in a blizzard of toxic dust and flaming debris.

Then the readers will recite the dead one by one – brothers, sisters, cousins, mothers, men, wives. It is a ritual that will take about three and a half hours.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was announced for his leadership as mayor of New York when it was attacked, recalled the tragedy and tttps: //www.nytimes. com / he loses that day.

The 18th anniversary, not an important milestone like the fifth or the 10th, takes place in an area that recovered when it was rebuilt and, some say, as the country continued. But for those families whose relatives were killed, the grief remains as pervasive and profound as ever.

There are now 400 trees where the rubble existed in 2001. For the ceremonies, speakers have been hung – carefully – from many of the trees. The idea is that the names that are read should be heard anywhere on the eight-acre site of the memorial site.

At ground zero, "The Star-Spangled Banner" will be sung by Kassidy Rieder, a senior at Long Island School for the Arts who is in her third year in the preschool program at Juilliard School.

She's too young to remember September 11th. Her mother, Nancy Collins, is a police officer who worked at ground zero during the search and recovery operation – until she discovered she was waiting for Kassidy.